proposals

at the museum 
in the Egyptian exhibit 
we saw a man in a grey sweater
get down on one knee & propose 
to a woman with strawberry blonde hair.

the couple stood in front of
a reconstructed tomb
a box of stone words.

i tell you that old things like
this terrify me because the people
who carved each symbol 
are dust dust dust
(it could be the Catholicism speaking).

i wanted to follow the couple
around & listen to their conversations.
what did they think of the mummies?

does he tell her that he'll
build her a tomb, bigger 
& more extravagant than Khaba or
Sneferu, that he'll build her
statues around its entrance

does she tell him that he's 
silly to say such things, that 
she imagines their love like
the corpses here, preserved &
always beautiful, 
wearing turquois & scarabs

maybe she tells him that
they should be burried
in the same coffin, facing 
each other.

i should have followed them
i should because i can't help
but think that they never
left the museum,

that they wondered,
trapped in the ancient objects
on the first floor.

& at night as they closed 
the museum & we were already  
on the train back home

he took the ring off her finger
& told her that
centuries from now
people might find 
the jewelry 
& try to guess
what their rings meant

he says that they might guess wrong
& think that the ring means
they're already married or 
invent another ritual 
to explain them.

as he says this they're
laying in the stone tomb
& the windows are all 
night sky & street lights

do they stay there
forever then?
i like to hope so

if i could have proposed
to you that day 
i would have asked if
we could be statues 
there, lion-faced maybe
egret faced maybe 
dog faced maybe
anything, just 
not mummies